Necro's Guide to Weapon Customization
Hi, my name is TheNecro115, aka Necro, and I’m one of the admins of the Contract Wars wiki. I’m making this guide on the basics on weapon customization because I have nothing better to do. Please read everything before asking questions or commenting.. If I missed anything let me know. So let’s get started. Weapon customization is a feature added to the game that allows you to add/or change different kinds of sights, optics, suppressors, muzzle brakes, and tactical devices to your weapon. This will allow you to create a weapon to your specific play style. For example, you can have a close quarters sniper by adding a collimator or a long range SMG like adding an ACOG optic to an MP5k. Although, sometimes you cannot add certain mods to a gun because of limitations. For example, you cannot change the barrel (change suppressor or add muzzle brakes) of the VSS Vintorez because the gun has an integrated suppressor. Meaning it is part of the weapon and you cannot change it. If you don’t like the way a certain weapon preforms, you possibly change the play style of the weapon by adding different combinations of modifications. Camos are also added to the game. Your gun can look cooler and put even more uniqueness to your gun. Enough about what customization is, how do you do it? MP First, you have to know what Mod Points ( ) are. Mod Points, abbreviated as “MP”, is a new currency added to the game along with Credits( ), Gold Points ( ), and Skill Points ( ). MP is used for buying weapon modifications and camos on the customization tree of the weapon. Modifications generally cost lower on weapons that are in lower sets and cost higher on higher sets. There are several ways you can obtain MP and they are listed on the MP page linked a few lines above. But the main way of getting MP is playing the game and earning , or experience points. The picture above shows your progression of getting 1 MP. So you’ll need 5,000 to get 1 MP. But there are limitations however. Only earned in a certain way will count towards getting MP. They are: earned from kills and earned from killstreaks, and from assists. Armsteaks (sonar and mortar) will NOT count towards gaining MP. Also, some players are confused whether or not clan contribution affects the gain of MP. Clan contribution does NOT in fact hinder your MP progression. This means that no matter how much you’re contributing to your clan, your towards MP progression will not be reduced. Customization Now on to the core of customization. Only certain weapons are customizable. Don’t worry though, the developers said that all weapons will be customizable at one point, even snipers and secondary’s. The developers are adding 3-4 weapons to customize every month. So far, all current customizable weapons are listed here and it will be updated. For all examples, I will be using the MP5k. Let's get into this. The GIF above shows where to click to open the customization screen on the customizable weapon. Click on the small MP looking symbol on the bottom right of the weapon. Now on the picture above I’ve highlighted parts of the screen so I’ll explain in detail what each part means. The Tree - Highlighted in green is customization tree. This is the tree of mods that is available to the weapon. The tree here is like a skill tree, you have unlock mods that are before the desired mods. Notice the lines connecting the different the mods. There’s probably a better explanation to this so hopefully someone can do a better job in the comments. Now there is 3 types of mods. There is the mods that are highlighted in blue. These mods are sights and optics. The mods highlighted in yellow are mods are muzzle brakes and suppressors, and the mods highlighted in green are tactical mods. At the top of the tree, it shows the base mods of the gun. Some guns will have pre-attached sights/collimators and/or optics modifications and some will not. When your hovering over a mod, it will show you much it will cost if you didn’t unlock it already. To unlock mods, you have to have enough MP to buy it, you have to have the mods before it unlocked, and you have to have the meta-level unlocked as well. As shown in the above GIF, when you click that little unlock button, you have unlocked the mod! To equip the mod, just click on it. To switch it to something else, just click on the same colored mod. To un-equip it just go to the top of the tree and click on the base mods as shown in the GIF below. The boxes that contain the mods are called meta-levels. Each meta-level requires a certain amount of EXP to unlock. But you can unlock the meta-level early with GP. I don’t have enough GP to buy it so when you click on it, it will ask you are you sure you want to buy it. A gray meta-level is a meta level you have unlocked. Here you can buy and attach mods. The red meta-levels are locked. On the bottom of a locked meta-level you can see how much EXP you have gotten for the meta-level out of the amount required to unlock it. But like MP, only certain EXP earned in certain ways will count towards unlocking meta-levels. EXP earned from kills and killstreaks will count towards unlocking meta-levels. After version 1.6018 (after the 4th customization update and new gun Sig MPX), assists will count toward unlocking meta-levels. Before version 1.6018, assists did not count. On the very right side of the tree section, there is a gray scroll bar in which you can scroll up and down to see the connection between mods. The Mods-- Highlighted in blue is the mod section. When you click on a mod, you can see the name and description of the mod to the left. The small strip to the right shows how that mod affects the weapon's stats. In this case, the Aimpoint Micro H1 collimator increases accuracy and decreases mobility. Generally speaking, collimators (sights) or optics increases accuracy and decreases recoil. Muzzle brakes decreases recoil and increases range, and suppressors increases accuracy and decreases recoil, damage, penetration, range, and noise. Almost all mods decrease mobility. The Stats-- Highlighted in red is the stats of the weapon. This shows the weapons stats before and after applying skills and/or mods. The bars also show this. The gray numbers and bars are the base stats of the weapon. These are the base stats of the weapon, the stats of the weapon by itself without skills or mods. The blue bars and numbers show how the weapon is affected by skills. So in the MP5k’s case, it shows that with skills, it adds 31 accuracy to it. The numbers in green and red shows how mods affect the weapon. Green numbers show how they benefit the weapon with mods and the red shows how it lowers the guns stats. The numbers all the way at the end of stats section show the final stats of the weapon. If a number is white, it’s usually a zero, which means the stats is not affected by anything (except for finals stats. Final stats are always white.). Other Information-- Highlighted in purple shows other stats of the gun. It shows you the total amount of EXP you have earned with the weapon and how many kills you have gotten with it. It also shows your MP progression. The Gun Model-- In pink it shows the gun model. It shows how the gun will look in game with all the mods it has and the camo it has. You can rotate the gun by holding the left mouse button and dragging it. Clicking on the magnifying class will let you zoom in to see it in better detail. The when you click on “3D” , it will automatically rotate it for you, but it will take a few seconds to start rotating. On the bottom it shows the mods you have equipped and how it affects the stats of the weapon. Above that you will see the list of different camos you have got for the weapon. For more info on camos you can visit this page. Here you can see a little preview of the camo and it’s full name and shorthand named. Below it shows that the shorthand name is “TEN” but the full name is “Ten (Shadow) Pattern”. You can equip a camo by clicking on it. When you finished customizing your weapon, ALWAYS remember to click save before going to play, as shown below. If you don’t, then your customized weapon will not show up in game. Visual Recoil If you’re reading this in the future and all guns are customizable then you can skip this part. When you playing with a customizable weapon, you will notice that guns have really jumpy, shaky sights and non-customizable weapons don’t seem to shake as much. I want to clarify what’s going on. The shaking is not the actual recoil of the weapon, it’s called visual recoil. Visual recoil is the animation of the recoil of the weapon. The actual recoil of the weapon is shooting at the center of the screen but the shaking of the sights or optics is not showing that. This got a lot of hate from most of the community. KniferXZ from the Kongergate forums summarizes the problem in good words: : “The bullets you’re firing are still coming from the center of the screen, but the visual recoil makes your entire gun and sight/optic shake in front of you, making it much harder if not impossible to see what you’re shooting at.” :: ─ KniferXZKniferXZ at Kongregate forums I don’t know why the developers decided to make this move, maybe someone else knows. The visual recoil got and still is getting lots of hate from the community. Some say it’s game-breaking and people quit Contract Wars because of it. They say it ruined their favorite weapon. As you can see below, the left GIF shows the old MP5k and on the right shows the new MP5k. As you can see, the new MP5k's sights jumps around more than the old. Opinions and Conclusion So this is a small guide to weapon customization. If I missed anything, I’ll probably add it later to what I’ve done so far. In my opinion weapon customization is a good feature and a good move by the developers. Although it got hate for making the game boring because of grinding for EXP, and it has gotten hate with the recoil, I think this was a good update. In my opinion, they should’ve incorporated CR some way. High ranked players have no use for CR. I have 1 million CR just lying around. Much older players have millions upon millions of CR just there, never going to be used. Maybe mods should cost both MP and CR, that way, CR will be used. But that’s just my opinion. Overall, weapon customization is a good feature that they added. It adds more variety and gives players more things to do. +1 Devs. Fin References Category:Tips